Last updated on May 21st, 2021 at 05:10 pm
Sen. Susan Collins received hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions in 2020, and the FBI is investigating.
A recently unsealed search warrant application shows the FBI believes a Hawaii defense contractor illegally funneled $150,000 to a pro-Collins super PAC and reimbursed donations to Collins’ campaign. There’s no indication that Collins or her team were aware of any of it.
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Collins helped the contractor at issue, then called Navatek and since renamed the Martin Defense Group, secure an $8 million Navy contract before most of the donations took place.
The donor that Collins helped out was indicted last year for bilking the federal government out of millions of dollars of coronavirus relief.
Collins surprisingly easily won what looked like a tight reelection race in 2020, and she may have done it with the help of a familiar campaign scheme that is popular with Republicans. A fake organization was created to donate to Sen. Collins’s PAC, and the donor also illegally reimbursed family and colleagues for donations to Collins.
It doesn’t matter if Susan Collins participated in the scheme. The fact that such illegal activity is happening is why Congress needs to pass the For The People Act and reform the campaign finance system.
Susan Collins has constructed a false image as a pure moderate, but this scandal shows that she is another Republican on the take.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
